Omikron: The Nomad Soul (Just The Nomad
Soul in the UK) has only recently caught the eye of most gamers and game
sites, I for one have been following the games progress for some time
after the announcement that David Bowie would be playing one of the
characters in the game and doing the games music. The closest game that I
can mention that comes close to the type of gameplay that The Nomad Soul
produces is Outcast, but this time The
Nomad Soul has a number of shooting and combat sections which you will be
involved in.

Here are some of the features:

Explore a huge city in real-time 3D
with hundreds of passers-by and vehicles moving about with complete
freedom to move around and discover the Omikron world.

Experience "virtual
reincarnation", the ability to move directly into the body of the
first person who touches you after you die.

Featuring an all
original soundtrack co-written by David Bowie and his long-time
collaborator, Reeves Gabrels. David and Reeves, along with fellow
musician Gail Ann Dorsey will be playing in several bars in the city
as a "virtual band".

Featuring David
Bowie as Boz, the Virtual Being. For the role of Boz, David Bowie
contributed his voice and allowed a graphic fantasy rendition to be
made of himself for the role. In addition, his wife, supermodel Iman,
acts as the model for one of the characters (Iman 631) in the game
that players can take control of as part of the "virtual
reincarnation" process.

All combat moves and dialogues are
entirely animated with advanced 3D motion-capture technology,
including incredible fighting moves executed by martial arts world
champions.

220 minutes of dialogue, all done in
real-time facial motion capture.

Installation, Settings
and Intro

The Nomad Soul comes on 3 CD-ROM's,
installation takes quite a while as the game can go and take upwards of
1GB's of space on your Hard-Drive if you wanted it to. I went for the
typical install, which takes up 500MB's of drive space. Once the install
has completed it is time to start up the game, the game begins with a
short introduction Full Motion Video scene, nicely done, once you get to
the first screen you are greeted with the following options:

New Game

Load Game

Options

Controls

Quit

As usual I went for the options area
first to set up my graphics card with the game, I decided to go for
everything at full and played the game in 1024x768. Sound settings and
everything else were already perfectly setup and I didn't need to change
anything there.

Gameplay

There are a number of
different gameplay elements in The Nomad Soul, ranging from a 3D adventure
title to a full 3D shooter and beat-em-up. About 80% of the game is
adventure related, and it works very well. The game begins with you taking
over the body of a policeman who has just died, he asks for your help and
your first task is to find out how he (or you) and his partner Den died.
The adventure part of the game consists of talking to characters, choosing
what reply you want to give and picking up and uses objects in the right
places.

The Nomad Soul draws you in
right from the beginning with its wonderful atmosphere, it feels like you
are actually taking part in an interactive movie (No not the crappy Ripper
or Wing Commander types, really interactive) and has a similar look to the
Blade Runner movie in terms of characters and setting. The game setting
also changes from night to day and vice versa. The Nomad Soul is also
quite adult orientated which is a plus in my view, and I mean adult in
terms of strip bars, morgues, examining bodies not swearing etc.

The interface you use is
very easy to get to grips with, you can hold a limited number of objects
in your inventory (Called the Sneak, a device that is attached to your
arm) but instead of having to go back and pick objects up later in the
game because you don't have space, you can transfer objects from your
inventory into a system called The Multiplan Virtual Locker. Once the
objects are inside this virtual locker (Which is available all over the
place) you just have to walk up to one, use it and transfer objects
between your inventory and the multiplan. From the Sneak pad on your arm
you can also call your main transport in the game called The Slider (Shown
below). From the Sneak pad you can choose your next destination and the
Slider will drive you there instead of having to walk all around Omikron.
The Sneak pad also keeps items of interest in its memory device, such as
specific conversations, characters you need to speak to etc, making it
easy to know the next place you should be checking out.

During the game you get to
jump into the bodies of various characters and the story continues on.
Later in the game you also have to swim, jump and run to new destinations.
The only problem I have with the gameplay is that it can sometimes feel a
little linear due to the main story line.

Graphics, Sound &
Music

Graphically The Nomad Soul
is superb throughout the whole game. The cities, backgrounds and
characters are full of detail and the design of the futuristic cities is
great. Animation on all of the characters is also excellent, especially
when you are close up and in conversation with them, their actual facial
expressions do show off how the character is feeling such as happy or sad.
I have mentioned Outcast in this review
quite a bit, while Outcast was using Voxel technology (Which didn't work
properly for a lot of people and was arse achingly slow sometimes) The
Nomad Soul uses Direct3D to great effect with the ability to use high
resolutions. The only thing missing was 32-bit color, which I felt would
enhance the environment even more.

Both music and sound are
used to great effect during the game, the music more so. The David Bowie
and Reeves Gabrels soundtrack and ambiance music is very well suited to
the game. Most of the David Bowie tracks are only played when you visit
one of the bars his band is playing in (You pick up flyers that tell you
where the next gig is). Unfortunately though you can't actually skip any
of these virtual concerts.

This could well turn out to
be one of the best adventure games this year, it has a strong plot, lots
of puzzles and variety. It is also a very large game so you won't be
completing it in a hurry. Graphically the game can't do much wrong and the
same goes for the sound and music (Obviously it helps if you are a fan of
David Bowie). I don't think it is quite as non-linear as Outcast, in terms
of sub-missions etc but it certainly has a heck of a lot going for it. An
excellent adventure title, one of the best this year.

Specs
& Package

Overall
Score

91%

Version
Reviewed

Version
1.0

Release
Date

Out
Now (UK)

In
The Box?

3
CD's
1 Set of instructions

The
Good Points

Great
Graphics
Easy To Use Interface
Good Voice Overs
Good Music
Good Story
Easy To Get Into
Nice Adventure Elements

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